The rarest Kona of all

[GoldenEraMTB]

Nice find, Anthony.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Tubing is Altitude Cycles in house stuff (so could be anything lying around )
It's thick tubing 0.1mm thicker at each section the used on the other high end bikes in the range, should should be bomb proof and feel stiffer and less forgiving compared to the other round tubed bikes. Maybe somewhere between Kila and Cinda
Diameters are not listed, guess from photo's and the 4.0lb/18"claimed weight it's quite a skinny tube. But use standard 27.0 etc as per the rest.

 

[haggis]

i wondered if id ever see one of these. looks nice anyway despite the low end kit

 

[Faghetaboutit]

i wonder if my mrs fancies a weekend in north carolina?

 

[Anthony]

Tubing is Altitude Cycles in house stuff (so could be anything lying around )
It's thick tubing 0.1mm thicker at each section the used on the other high end bikes in the range, should should be bomb proof and feel stiffer and less forgiving compared to the other round tubed bikes. Maybe somewhere between Kila and Cinda
Diameters are not listed, guess from photo's and the 4.0lb/18"claimed weight it's quite a skinny tube. But use standard 27.0 etc as per the rest.

I don't think you can really call an 8-5-8/9-6-9 tubeset 'thick' Ben. Gump has a rusted-through top tube on one of his Altitudes, which he attributes to it being 'crazy-thin'. That's also an 8-5-8 tube, so you can argue amongst yourselves whether 8-5-8 is thick or crazy-thin, but I would regard it as moderately thin. Tange never made a mtb tube thinner than that at that time, and only Columbus used a 7-4-7. The standard Tange Prestige tubeset had 9-6-9 top and down tubes, Ultimate Superlight had 8-5-8 top and down tubes.

I don't know of an unbranded heat-treated steel tubeset, but I suppose they were available. As to what Altitude might have had 'lying around', Mountain Goat never used anything below Tange Prestige, and by this time the majority of their production was for VooDoo who did have the Hoodoo made of Tange MTB (i.e., non heat-treated), but the other VooDoos were made of varieties of Prestige. So if the Caldera tubes were lying around, they would be a Prestige mix, but maybe they were bought in specially, nobody will ever know.

The other part of the published spec is clearly wrong. I don't know why any tube manufacturer would make a heat-treated 1.5/0.9 seat tube anyway, as 0.6 tubes were strong enough even not heat-treated. But even if they did, you clearly can't fit a 27.0 post into a 28.6 tube of 0.9 gauge, so that bit must be wrong. Might that cast doubt on the rest of the spec? Again, we shall never know.

What the ride quality might be, we might have to pay a visit to Locust, NC to find out, but my VooDoo is a fun ride, slightly stiffer and more stable than a 97 Kilauea. This Caldera may be an ounce lighter, factionally less stiff but much the same. It'll be stiffer than a 97 Hot, but whether that is an advantage or a disadvantage is a matter of taste, how much you weigh, etc.

 

[FluffyChicken]

I did qualify thick in that sentence, as it was comparing to the other top end bikes but not as thick as the lower models.

So who's off to over there to find out, cut it up and measure it all for us ?

In the aid of RetroBikeScience of course.


I would think the 0.9 could quite easily be a typo. coming about as the end buts thickness ? of .9/.6 SBT tubing and the Altitude Tubing could easily be something like other companies 'custom blends' of prestige/OX/..
who knows, would the old workers still know.